1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software testing and, more particularly, to automated analysis and testing of websites.
2. Description of the Related Art
Websites are complex collections of information intended to be viewed and used and interacted with by sending information from a WebSite server over the Internet to users who work with this information from an internet browser (client program) that typically runs on a computing device, such as a personal computer (PC). A common browser is the Internet Explorer (IE) browser that runs on Microsoft Windows. However, the invention can also equally apply to non-IE browsers.
Testing and analysis of Web Applications and WebSites is needed for various reasons:                1. To confirm content and proper operation and proper content (functional testing and validation).        2. To determine delivered performance of a web application server (timing and tuning).        3. To analyze capacity of the WebSite server by imposing realistic loads (server loading).        4. To identify properties and characteristics of collections of pages (site analysis).        
There are several alternative methods that can be used to obtain information about how a WebSite behaves. These alternative methods are as follows: (1) Intercept of the Windows event loop, which means that the program has to process every keyboard activity and/or mouse activity at the primitive level of where it interacts with the operating system (OS). (2) Intercept the HTTP protocol sequence by building a wrapper or a proxy around a browser instances, thereby extracting the sequence of interactions between the browser and the WebSite server. (3) Capture information within the browser by building a free-standing browser with test capabilities.
Thus there is a need for improved approaches to testing websites.